For the past three weeks my church has had Perry & Karen Shaw and their two children Chris and Pheobe, who are missionaries in Beirut with Middle East Christian Outreach. They’ve been presenting at a number of our church events, including Perry preaching on the first Sunday they were here and Karen running a session on Understanding Islam. They also presented at the youth group and sunday school and at the various small groups throughout the week.

Last weekend I was away at the Mid Coast Youth Convention in Scotts Head with a few friends (including Chris, we had a quiz ‘who came the furthest’ on the opening night, and you can guess who won :)). The speaker, Leon Stead, talked on the Old Testament book of Habukkuk. It was very encouraging and he explained the book and the situation in Israel at the time very well. I find we tend to ignore the minor prophets in the Old Testament and concentrate on the New Testament instead, and in doing that we lose a lot of valuble stuff that is still very relevant today.